... a better good; 1815.

"THERE IS A LITTLE UNPRETENDING RILL"

Composed 1806?--Published 1820

[This Rill trickles down the hill-side into Windermere, near Low-wood.
My sister and I, on our first visit together to this part of the
country, walked from Kendal, and we rested to refresh ourselves by the
side of the lake where the streamlet falls into it. This sonnet was
written some years after in recollection of that happy ramble, that most
happy day and hour.--I. F.]

One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."--ED.

There is a little unpretending Rill
Of limpid water, humbler far than aught[1]
That ever among Men or Naiads sought
Notice or name!--It quivers down the hill,
Furrowing its shallow way with dubious will; 5
Yet to my mind this scanty Stream is brought[2]
Oftener than Ganges or the Nile; a thought
Of private recollection sweet and still![3]
Months perish with their moons; year treads on year;
But, faithful Emma! thou with me canst say 10
That, while ten thousand pleasures disappear,
And flies their memory fast almost as they,[4]
The immortal Spirit of one happy day
Lingers beside that Rill,[5] in vision clear.[6]

One of the MS. readings of the ninth line of this sonnet gives the date
of the incident as "now seven years gone"; but I leave the date of
composition undetermined. If we could know accurately the date of the
"first visit" to the district with his sister (referred to in the
Fenwick note), and if we could implicitly trust this MS. reading, it
might be possible to fix it; but we can do neither. Wordsworth visited
the Lake District with his sister as early as 1794, and in December 1799
he took up his abode with her at Dove Cottage. I have no doubt that the
sonnet belongs to the year 1806, or was composed at an earlier date. As
to the locality of the rill, the late Rev. R. Perceval Graves, of
Dublin, wrote to me:--

"It was in 1843, when quitting the parsonage at Bowness, I went to
reside at Dovenest, that, calling one day at Rydal Mount, I was
told by both Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, as a fact in which I should
take a special interest, that the 'little unpretending rill'
associated by the poet with 'the immortal spirit of one happy
day,' was the rill which, rising near High Skelgill at the back of
Wansfell, descends steeply down the hill-side, passes beh